I cant boot anything...

[beansbaxter]

I am extremely frustrated. I know a lot about computers, but I am truely dumbfounded.

Standard setup, Asus A7V600 with an AMD 2700 and 512Mb DDR400, newest BIOS 1008 and:

NOTHING WILL BOOT! And I mean NOTHING! And I cannot figure it out.

I cannot boot off a CD (Windows XP, Windows 98, Windows 2000)
I cannot boot off a Floppy (Formatted system disk, Windows XP Boot Disk, Western Digital Drivetools)

I have tried different CD drives, and connected up different floppy drives, but nothing works. I dont know what to do...is it a bad motherboard???

When I try to boot off a CD, I get the following message:

Booting off ATAPI CD-ROM:
No Emulation

And the system hangs...

If I boot off a floppy, it reads the floppy drive (the light is on), but it just hangs, the system freezes with the floppy light permanently on.

Everything here was brand new, just ordered it all off Newegg so yeah....PLEASE HELP ME!!

 

[Medea]

Sometimes, bootable CD's will still not boot even though you set the boot device to CD-ROM, so you'll have to set your floppy drive as your first drive and use floppies. You have to use floppies that match the CD that you have - either XP Pro or XP Home - Win98 or Win2000 won't work. Select CD-ROM support when it asks you. When the boot is finished you will be able to find your CD-ROM, and list the files on the CD - one file will be setup.exe. Type 'setup' and Windows setup will start.

If you have an E-Z bios, don't put the floppy in the drive. When E-Z bios starts, press CTRL and it will take you to a menu that asks if you want to start from floppy or HD. Pick floppy and insert your startup disk. The startup disk will load then ask you if you want CD-ROM support. Select CD-ROM support. When the boot process has finished you will be able to see your HD and your CD-ROM. The start up disk will create a Ramdisk. So if your HD is C:, the Ramdisk will be called D: and this will contain all the files that were on the startup disk and allows you to take the startup disk out of the floppy drive. Your CD-ROM will then be E: instead of D:

Lastly, one simple thing. If your floppy drive light stays on all the time, you've got the ribbon cable in backwards, so check that before you go through the steps above.

You also might want to try setting your CD-ROM to auto.

 

[mechBgon]

You mention Western Digital Drivetools, so I'm guessing you have a WD? (Hint: full specs are helpful) If so, and if the WD has its own IDE cable, then set the drive's jumper to Single Drive and not Master or Slave.

 

[beansbaxter]

I have tried to boot to floppies first. Since I was trying to install Windows XP, I tried to use the Windows XP Floppy Boot Discs. THen I tried the new Windows XP SP2 Floppy Boot Discs to use with my slipstreamed XP SP2. Still neither work.

I tried to use the Western Digital Data Lifeguard Boot Up Disc - didnt work.

When there are no discs in any drives, the system comes back with "System Disc cannot be found" and it is awaiting a disc to boot off of. However, when there is a floppy boot up disc in the drive, it just hangs on the floppy drive with the light on. The floppy light is off, it doesnt turn on until it accesses it and then it stays on so the cable is good.

I've tried setting it to Auto, tried different HD and CD drives both, I just cant get anything to boot. Basically it boils down to if the computer looks for a floppy disc, it hangs and if the computer looks for a CD it comes back saying no emulation.

System Specs in more detail:
Asus A7V600 Bios 1008
AMD XP 2700+
Kingmax PC3200 DDR400 512Mb
ATI Radeon 9600 AGP 8X Video
Samsung 16X DVD-Rom Drive
NEC 16X DVD-R/RW Burner

And for the hardrive, I've tried both of these:
Western Digital 120Gb 8Mb 7200 ATA100
Maxtor 160Gb 8Mb 7200 ATA133

I've tried swapping out cables too with no luck. I've disabled the sound, network, usb, all that in the BIOS too to try to eliminate as much as possible.

Any ideas or guidance??

 

[beansbaxter]

Update

Well trying numerout things allowed me to stumble upon this if this helps anyone...I unplugged the hardrive all together and set the BIOS to boot to CD first. Then I loaded up Windows 2000 and it booted just fine off that CD. Then I loaded up my slipstreamed XP SP2 and it also booted up just fine.

Now obviously there was no hardrive installed so I couldnt go ahead and do the install, but it appears that when a hardrive is installed then the system hangs on the CD boot.

Whatcha'll think??

 

[mechBgon]

If the drives have a Single Drive jumper setting, as opposed to Master or Slave, use it.